Live Free or Die

Life, love, death, and laughs in a small American town. The struggle between the rural working class and the upper crust intensifies in this turning-point novel of the Darby Chronicles as Freddy Elman, son of the town trash collector, and Lilith Salmon, daughter of a prestigious family, embark on their ill-fated love affair. Seeing Darby through new eyes, Freddy comes to realize that "the kind of people who hunkered down among these tree-infested, rock-strewn hills" is "dying out, replaced by people with money, education, culture, people 'wise in the ways of the world.'" As that world increasingly intervenes, the lovers' attempt to bridge the chasm that divides their class-alienated families inevitably collapses in Hebert's tragic tale that echoes Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. This is a book for anyone interested in local politics, privilege, and poverty, all embedded in a story of love and death in the woods and on the ledges of the Granite State.